


the music of the name

by venndaai



Category: Benjamin January Mysteries - Barbara Hambly
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Canon-Typical Illness, Canon-Typical Substance Abuse, Crossdressing, F/F, Fever sex, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Period-Typical Racism, Period-Typical Sexism, Sex Work, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:15:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23942947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/pseuds/venndaai
Summary: A chance meeting on the levee at night leads to an unexpected friendship.
Relationships: Ayasha January/Benjamin January, Benjamin January/Hannibal Sefton
Comments: 7
Kudos: 6
Collections: Id Pro Quo 2020





	the music of the name

**Author's Note:**

  * For [within_a_dream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/within_a_dream/gifts).



September in New Orleans, hot and stinking. There was plenty of light on the city’s waterfronts even at three in the morning, and noise, too; but it faded as January walked down the levee, down an empty wharf, towards the entrancing dark ripple of the rapid current, the power of the river sleek and rank and oil-black. It called like a lover, but as January approached the song faded to a whisper, leaving January to stand at the end of the wharf, looking out at nothing, feeling the very faint echo of distant storm-winds caressing skin and cloth. 

And then into the darkness came music.

January did not turn immediately. The music was so sweet, so unearthly, the melody of a single violin, that it seemed entirely unreal. But when January finally turned, there was someone there, perched on a bollard. A white woman, her broad skirts falling down over the post, her long dark hair tumbling loose over her shoulders in defiance of current fashions. A violin tucked under her chin. 

As January approached, footsteps soft on the creaking wood of the pier, she looked up. She had the darkest eyes January had ever seen. She said, “You look like someone who needs a drink.” Her contralto voice had the whispering hoarseness of consumption. She spoke English, but her accent was not American. Irish, January thought, but anglicized, upper-class. It contributed to the overall impression of her as something otherworldly, straight from the lyrics of a ballad. 

Up close, however, January, who knew women’s fashions and what they meant, could see the cut of her cheap but colorful dress, the glimmer of paste jewelry. 

She hadn’t been there ten minutes ago. She had followed January out onto the wharf, and sat down to play. It was an unusual marketing strategy, that was for certain. New Orleans had changed while January was away, if her whores now played Mozart more hauntingly than the violinists of the Paris orchestra.

“I have no money,” January said.

The violinist nudged something with the toe of one booted foot. A bottle of gin, resting against the bottom of the bollard. “I’ll freely share.” 

The gin was cheap, and tasted horrific. 

“Hoping to find someone you’ve lost, in these waters?” the violinist asked. The darkness had softened her features, but now that they were standing close January could see that she was older than most women in her profession, the signs of age imperfectly covered by powders and pastes. She might be as old as January. “Or just looking for oblivion? They lie, the poets who say it flows in the River Styx. _Who knows what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil...”_

 _“Aye, there’s the rub,”_ January said, and drank again. 

The violinist coughed, and switched bow to her other hand, pressing the now free hand to her side. “Life can be difficult, I know,” she said, with a wry smile. Her voice had hoarsened into even more of a whisper. “Particularly when one is passing as something one is not.”

January froze. 

She should have felt frightened, she thought. She was new in town, unknown except as Livia Levesque’s long lost nephew. The word of even a drunken streetwalker could destroy her, especially when that streetwalker was white. But hadn’t she come to the pier searching for destruction?

“I don’t believe we’ve been introduced, madam,” January said. 

The violinist hopped down from the bollard, landing unsteadily and swaying. “Dido Sefton, at your service.” She swept into an exaggerated curtsy, coughed, and overbalanced. January automatically reached out to catch her, and found herself with an armful of floral-printed cotton and lace and warm skin. Dido smelled of gin, and cheap perfume, and laudanum, and blood. January stood frozen, her own blood pounding in her ears.

But there was no one to witness them, and Dido caught her balance, and January took a step back. “Thank you,” she said. “How gallant you are.” She was tall, as tall as January, now that she was standing straight. January was transfixed by those dark eyes. “Will you tell me your name, sir?”

“Benjamin January,” January said.

“And the friend you’re looking for, out in the black water?”

But January found she could not speak Ayasha’s name. It lodged in her throat, tearing at her.

She drank again.

 _“That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,”_ her companion murmured.

“You were playing Mozart,” January said. 

Dido nodded.

“Might I ask you to play it again?”

“Certainly,” she said, and January sat down, leaning back against the bollard, as bow was set against string and the otherworldly music began again, sparkling with joy and light and life.

It was two nights after that that January was hired for her first event in New Orleans, playing at a ball attended by her sister.

She couldn’t help wondering whether Minou even realized she was lying when she introduced her long-lost cousin to the musicians. Beautiful Dominique had been so young when her eldest sister went away. January doubted that her mother had ever spoken of her firstborn, while January was in France. Told anyone who enquired that her most inconvenient daughter had died on the long voyage; not even mentioned her ‘bereavement’ to her friends and acquaintances in the upper circles of free colored society.

Someone must have missed Josephine Janvier. Perhaps not mourned, but at least missed. The fierce old master who had first taught her the raptures of music. The orange seller who often had a kind word for her. The respectable free man of color Livia Janvier had attempted to marry her to. 

The sister who had left her behind. 

“This is my cousin Benjamin, he’s a wonderful pianist,” Minou proclaimed. January scanned the faces automatically, searching for any she recognized, who might recognize her from another life-

There was a white man in the group, an unusual sight. The violinist. Long dark hair tied back with a bright red ribbon. A narrow, smooth-shaven face. Eyes a deep, dark black, and a long thin mouth bent into a crooked smile. 

The violinist winked at her, a brief flicker of a thing.

“Benjamin, this is Jacques, Uncle Bichet, Mr. Sefton.” 

“Mademoiselle Janvier, must I implore you once again to call me Hannibal?” the violinist said. January became aware that she was staring, and did her best to look away. 

“But then you must call me Minou,” January’s sister said flirtatiously. 

January sat down at the piano, and experimentally played a few notes. It was as beautiful an instrument as any she’d touched in France. 

“Oh,” Minou said, and January looked up to see attendees arriving. “I must go,” she said. Coudn’t be caught speaking to the servants, January thought. But she blew Sefton a kiss before turning away. 

The venue was beautiful, and so were the dancers, but January forgot about them all as she lost herself in the river of the music. She’d played a few times, these last few months, and given lessons, but she hadn’t played as part of a group since- since before the cholera. She’d forgotten the joy of it. And sweeping through it all, soaring and leaping around January’s melody, was the angelic voice of the violin. 

Afterward she drank lemonade in a hot smoky kitchen, and said goodbye to the other musicians as they departed. The violinist, slumped in a corner, cradling an instrument case between knees and elbows, showed no sign of movement. January crouched down and offered a glass of lemonade.

“Thank you,” Sefton said, and produced a small vial from inside a vest pocket. January watched a few drops of reddish-brown liquid fall into the glass. 

“So,” January said. “Dido and Hannibal. Which-” She paused, considered a moment. Tried again. “I won’t ask which name you were christened with, as I suspect the answer is neither.” Sefton’s eyes crinkled in amusement. “Which name do you go by when you’re at home?”

‘Home’ was probably also a loaded concept, January realized, but too late, as Sefton already was smiling slightly. “I’m called many things in bed,” Sefton said, and then the smile softened. “But I take your meaning.” Suddenly switching to Latin, “Dido is the name I’d prefer my friends to use.” 

“Ah,” January said, satisfied, in the same language, “I thought so.” 

Her companion raised an eyebrow. “On what evidence? I’m curious now.”

“No evidence,” January said, “only the knowledge that there are far more reasons I can think of for a woman to pretend to be a man than for a man to disguise himself as a woman.” 

“Ah,” Dido said, “I fear that now I’ve misled you-”

“I do not think so,” January said, and, struck by sudden inspiration, added, in English, _“Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting?”_

She watched, very pleased, as Dido’s face changed, softened by relief and something that might even have been joy. It was a very pale face, sunken-eyed and hollow-cheeked, but it was not unpleasant to look at, even without the softening of paints and darkness. There was something very charming about that crooked smile, those dark, dark eyes. 

_“Honestior Ianuarius,_ ” Dido said, “I am very pleased to have met you. Although of course now it occurs to me I should have asked- what would you like me to call you?”

 _Josie,_ January started to say, but again the name stuck in her throat, just as Ayasha’s had. It had been a private thing, that name, between her and the woman she still expected to wake up next to each morning, whose loss she still suffered every day as though for the first time.

“I don’t know,” January said, still in English. “I suppose Benjamin is fine.” And, in a moment of candor that surprised even her, she added, “I’m not sure I really know who I am.”

“So few of us do,” Dido said. “ _‘Know thyself; this is the great object,’_ Seneca said. Well. Good night, then, fair stranger, fresh acquaintance. I am certain we’ll meet again.”

“I’ll walk you home,” January said. They might give each other protection, in the New Orleans dark; those who saw the delicate, consumptive fiddler as easy pickings might be put off by January’s bulk, and the company of a white man- or someone who appeared to be one- might shield January from some indignities. 

But she shook her head. “You wouldn’t enjoy my part of town,” she said. “But I’ll see you soon.”

She was correct. It wasn’t long after that that January landed employment playing in a much less high class establishment. She’d played in bordellos in Paris, but even that city didn’t boast as much variety in entertainment as did New Orleans. The house of ill repute on Gallatin Street was one of the more cosmopolitan. A customer could choose from a selection of complexions, accents, builds. He could even, if he was interested, purchase musically talented company, though January wondered how many of Dido’s patrons were really drawn to the sublimeness of her Mozart. 

From behind the bulwark of the piano, January watched Dido play, fingers trembling on the violin strings, her long dark hair damp with sweat. A small pale man sitting in an armchair observed her avidly. At the conclusion of the aria, she curtseyed to him, her bell-shaped skirt swirling, and bent to kiss his hand, and then she led him away into a back room. January played on.

Later Dido placed a small pouch on the lid of the piano. “Your wages, from Broussard,” she said, speaking of the proprietor. “Mine too. I’d like you to hang on to them for me, if you don’t mind. I’m bad at holding onto money myself.”

“If you’re comfortable trusting me,” January said. 

“Of course I am, _amica mea,_ ” she said, and sagged against the piano.

“I think we could both do with some air,” January said.

“You may be right,” Dido said with a faint smile. 

They went out onto the second floor’s little balcony, overlooking the street. “Take that look off your face,” Dido said. “This isn’t so bad a place to make some coin. It’s only half in the Swamp.”

January sighed. She leaned against the carved wooden balustrade, and Dido leaned against her. Casually affectionate, the way men sometimes were with January, believing her to be one of them.

_Amica mea. My friend._

The masculine would have been assumedly platonic. The feminine- well. Best not to make any assumptions.

How many friends had January ever had- true friends? Only one. Only Ayasha. Even Daniel, in Paris, had not known January’s secret. 

She had thought it would get easier, with time. That she would look in mirrors and see Benjamin Janvier, a man of average height and build, a handsome man, Ayasha had told her, even with the touch of gray dusting his close-cropped hair. A man who could do all the things Josephine could not, like make a living playing piano, or marry the woman he loved. 

_Ayasha…_

There was a warm pressure on her arm. January blinked. Dido had a palm pressed comfortingly to January’s arm, and she was holding out a white handkerchief. January took it, and wiped at her eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I lost someone, recently. It’s her I was looking for, that night.” 

January wanted, with all of her heart, to think only of the darkness of Dido’s eyes, the heat of her body, the gentle touch of her small long-fingered hand on January’s sleeve. But she was oppressively aware of the light from the open doorway, the room of people beyond. The noise from the street below, and the chance someone might glance up and see two figures embracing on a balcony. The ways in which this moment might be perceived, and the consequences of that perception. Two women embracing- two men- or, just as likely to draw ire- a black man and a white woman. 

There was something almost grimly amusing about the thought that if only they’d both fit the roles forced upon them- aristocratic man, and kept woman- they might have lived together openly, according to the custom of the country. Though January knew all too well that that path was not easy either. 

  
  
  


That fact was illustrated to her quite clearly two months later. The first Blue Ribbon ball of the year began badly, with a scream in the darkness, fear behind a mask, and a white man striking January in the street. She stood still for a while afterward, blocking movement in the crowded passage, trying to slow her breathing; trying to slow the rising of certain specific kinds of anger and fear she had not felt in years. 

The ball itself, when she arrived, was a fantasy of gaslight and masks and murmuring voices, and again she found herself stilled for a moment, remembering being a child, in love with the festival and its power to mix up times and places, produce heroes and villains from every story. Remembering being a young woman, knowing such balls were not for her. 

She wasn’t sure what made her look for the Mohican Princess. The fear she’d heard, and the sympathetic terror, the fear that she could so easily be in the Princess’s place. Perhaps. She found the woman in the service hall that led to the kitchen. 

“It’s all right, Mademoiselle. I just wanted to be sure you were all right.”

“Oh. Of course.” The Princess straightened her shoulders. “Thank you, Monsieur. The man was… importunate.” She was trying to sound calm and a little arrogant, but he saw from the shiver of her gold buckskin skirt that her knees were shaking. 

“Men often are.” 

_I could have been you,_ January thought, though that wasn’t true. _I was you._ That was closer, though she had never been that pale, that dainty and graceful. She had been that afraid, of importunate men. She remembered standing still in the crowded street. She still was afraid, but the fear, the anger, now had a different shape. Important to remember that. 

“Yes,” the woman said. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry, Mademoiselle,” January said.

“It’s all right,” she said. “Thank you. Excuse me.”

January let her go. 

“It’s eight,” Dido said, hanging from the doorframe, a thin scarecrow in an unbuttoned shirt. “Like as not Froissart’ll fire your ass.”

“Like as not Froissart knows what he can do with my ass,” January said, and sighed. 

“Who’s the lady who came out of here a minute ago?” Dido asked. She noticed a great deal more than January would have expected; she reminded her of her sister Dominique a little, in that way. 

“I don’t know,” January said. “I- Oh, I’m tired.”

“Already?” Dido said. “You’d better find some vigor somewhere, or you won’t last the night. Here, let’s get you something to drink.” 

“Not all of us can play beautifully while drunk to the gills, madame,” January said, but she let Dido lead her out of the hall and over to where the musicians were setting up. 

"Cheer up," Dido said to her. "It's Carnival. Enjoy all the beautiful ladies in their magnificent costumes." There was a wistfulness to the words, and January wondered if, like her, Dido felt a bit of angry jealousy, observing the elaborate coiffs and shimmering wardrobes of Creole ladies during carnival. If her friend would like to be one of the revellers out on the street, bedecked in jewels and silks, if she had money to spend on anything but alcohol and laudanum. 

But if wearing a beautiful costume meant attracting the attention of the Cardinal Richelieus of the world, January supposed she wouldn't make that trade.

She couldn’t quite shake a feeling of strange unease, and when they discovered the body in the parlor at the end of the hall, she felt more inevitable dread than shock. 

  
  


January had never, herself, exchanged words with Angelique Crozat before that fateful night. Once, years ago, when the woman had been a tiny girl, she and her mother had been guests in Livia Janvier’s home, and the little girl had said something very unpleasant about her host’s daughter. The memory was vivid in January’s mind, Dominique’s half strangled kitten in the little girl’s hands, the shrill tone of her voice. 

Seeing her as a woman, being casually cruel to the women around her, the disgust January had held for the little girl sharpened into a disturbingly intense hatred. Frequently she had to immerse herself in her piano playing, trying to ignore the little dramas happening around her. She knew intellectually that her hatred was only half for the woman herself. Half was for the world that gave her power over her life and her little circle, power denied to women larger and darker and born with less than her. 

The prospect of duels breaking out between Frenchmen and Yankees did distract her, as did the appearance of the hawklike Prussian dueling master by her piano. “Monsieur Janvier,” he said, courteously, though his gray wolfish eyes gazed out into the ballroom. January, between sets, peeled back a glove and used it to wipe sweat from her eyes. 

“Herr Mayerling,” January said. 

“We have a friend in common,” the fencing master said. Up close, January was struck by how young he was- only a boy, really, despite his scars and the fierceness of his face. “A certain Carthaginian queen?”

January blinked, and managed not to turn to look around for her violinist, who had probably gone in search of more alcohol. 

“We should speak, some time,” Mayerling said. “Discuss other things we may have in common. Though perhaps not this week. That imbecile Bouille’s challenged Granger to a duel, and now I must try to find a physician I can trust to more likely cure a man than kill him.”

January felt as though her mind was spinning off into confusion. Overtures of friendship- if that was indeed what Mayerling was offering, and not some oblique threat- were not something she had expected. It was one thing for a disreputable musician like Dido’s alter ego to associate with free colored men; it was something else for a respected and admired man like the much in demand swordmaster to do so. Yet she still found herself saying, “I can recommend a few. I’m no physician myself, but I’ve worked in the hospitals in this city and I am acquainted with several gentlemen whose abilities I can vouch for.” It was a somewhat foolish thing to say. It was the truth, but the doctors had worked with a girl, a female nurse, and those of them that she knew still lived and worked in New Orleans did not know Benjamin January. She wondered, for the first time, if she’d be able to return to the work this year, when the fever or cholera struck, or if her fear and heartsickness would make it impossible, even when the demand for music was low and it was nursing or starving. 

The beaklike nose turned towards her, the sharp gaze meeting hers. “I would be in your debt, sir,” the Prussian said. 

January inclined her head. “I will give you the names before the end of tonight’s ball, sir.” And let the consequences fall where they may.

“Very appreciated,” Mayerling said, and handed her a card. 

Later, looking at Angelique’s body, she forgot about the card, and only remembered it some time afterward. 

When she saw the blue-clothed city guardsmen, a part of January shivered with anxiety, though she was the one who had schemed to have them called. Looking at them, her eyes went immediately to the one in front, the leader. Could not help but stare at that shabby, flapping corduroy coat, the shoulder-length, greasy, sugar-brown hair. A face that was clean-shaven but surprisingly unwashed despite that. “Abishag Shaw, lieutenant of the New Orleans police, at your service, sir,” the man said to Froissart in Kaintuck-accented English. 

He wasn’t actually particularly tall, January thought, but he gave the impression of height, with his scarecrow frame and the way he loomed over the short and round Froissart. 

“Huh,” Dido breathed, behind January. January turned, raising an eyebrow. “Oh, probably nothing,” she said. “ _Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind_.” She coughed, then, and January saw a flash of pain cross across the narrow face. 

She was called in for interrogation before January was, and January felt a pang of apprehension seeing her escorted by the guardsmen; while January was the one person here tonight presently breaking the law with her false name and attire, Dido’s less reputable employer had been in trouble with the guard before, and Dido had probably the least recourse of anyone here if the guard did decide to pin something on her. But she seemed insouciant enough, and after several minutes she returned with a new bottle of champagne and took up her violin again, accompanying January’s sonatas with far more flourishes than January felt the late hour warranted.

“You know Miss Crozat?” the lieutenant asked January, when she at last was called into Froissart’s office, now a temporary interrogation chamber. 

“Only by reputation,” January said in the same language the question had been asked in, focusing very hard on keeping her gaze low, her posture neutral, and, for the first time in quite a while, feeling conscious of her voice, the little bit of effort it took to keep it low and gravelly, to avoid the little verbal tics which differentiated the English spoken by a woman of her social class from that of a man’s. “I was born in New Orleans, but I left many years ago, when Miss Crozat would have been a little girl, and I didn’t know the family. Though they’re friends with my cousin Dominique.” 

“Mmm,” Lieutenant Shaw said, noncommittally. “And is there anythin’ you could tell me about this murder?”

“I think she was still in the parlor fixing her wings when the murderer came upon her,” January said.

Shaw’s pale eyebrows quirked. “Now, where you get that from?”

“If we go back to that room-” January said.

Shaw made a gesture. “Go ahead.”

They went into the little parlor, unlocked by the constable guarding the door, and January went to where Dominique had propped up Angelique’s gauze wings against the armoire, and showed Shaw the needle that hung by the end of its silver thread from the wire of the wings.

“Mostly when you stop sewing you stick the needle into the fabric to keep the thread from pulling free,” she said. “Few things more frustrating than having to rethread a needle when you hadn’t planned on it.”

Shaw’s ugly face cracked into a smile. “Now, there’s a man’s been married.”

January stared at him, wondering- his smile seemed genuine. “My wife was a dressmaker,” she said, quietly, and felt a now-familiar pain in her chest. 

_“Who taught you sewing?” Ayasha had exclaimed, examining January’s attempts to assist on a project._

_“One of the older women on the plantation,” January had said, lost for a moment in memory, the offending piece of work held loosely on her lap. “Then my mother’s maid. She’d never stoop to sewing on a button herself, not once she was free and a lady.”_

_“Well, anyone who thinks sewing just comes naturally to women should take a good look at your stitches,” Ayasha had said tartly, and ripped them out viciously. January had watched her, watched the strength in her small hands._

When she came back to herself, those wolf’s eyes were watching her, but the lieutenant only said, “Smart thinking, anyways,” and asked about which men had been after Angelique Crozat that night. 

When January came back to the ballroom she found Dido asleep on a sofa, curled up under the flicker of gaslights. January pressed a hand to her friend’s forehead- hot- and used the excuse to brush some of the gray-brown hair out of her face. She looked different, like this, without corset or cosmetics. Older, January thought, and strangely more vulnerable.

 _“Night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast, and yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger,”_ she murmured.

 _“At whose approach, ghosts, wand’ring here and there, troop home to churchyards,”_ Dido murmured back, not opening her eyes.

“Indeed,” January said, “and so must we.”

“Well, if we must,” Dido said, with a sigh. 

January slid an arm around Dido’s bony shoulders, and helped her to her feet. “This time I’m walking you home,” she said. 

“Oh, no,” Dido said, with a yawn that turned into a cough. “Unless mine eyes deceive me, the sun seems to be approaching- _Phoebus, fresh as a bridegroom to his mate_ \- and dawn is the very hour when the fine establishments of the Swamp disgorge their patrons into what I must, for lack of a better word, call the street. You don’t want to encounter those fellows when they’re not quite drunk enough to pass out.”

“In that case I’m certainly not letting you go home on your own,” January said. “It’s Carnival. The cafes along the levee will be opening soon. I’ll buy you breakfast.”

“Oh, monsieur, you are the soul of generosity,” she said, fluttering long eyelashes, and January realized with a strange jolt of surprise that she was being flirted with, just as Dido had flirted with Minou earlier in the evening, or how she flirted with her customers when she wasn’t being Hannibal. But before she could decide how she wanted to respond, Dido’s eyes were sliding closed, and she was slumping in January’s arms. “Alas, sweet slumber has already claimed my mortal form.”

“Froissart’ll kick you out in a minute,” January said. “Come on. I’ll buy you beignets.”

“Well, that’s an offer I can’t refuse,” she said, and walked willingly enough with January out of the kitchen door.

The city streets were indeed quiet as they walked, fingers of gold staining the dark sky. Dido walked unsteadily, and January kept an arm tight around her waist, the violin case slung over January’s shoulder. At the river she deposited her friend in a chair at a cafe’s outdoor table, and spent rather too much on beignets, oranges, and hot sweet tea. Dido liberally adulterated the last with laudanum, and January only sighed, and helped her drink it. 

“That was a strange night,” January said conversationally, “even before the murder. You’re familiar with Augustus Mayerling, correct?”

“He’s been a good friend, yes,” Dido said, feebly dividing a beignet with fork and knife. “Not an _intimate_ friend- yet, anyway.” She looked up and grinned at January’s expression. “You’re far too easy to scandalize, _amica mea_. Why are you enquiring about our aquiline swordmaster?”

“I think he either intends to befriend me or blackmail me, and I was hoping you could shed light on the matter,” January said. “He mentioned you- mentioned your other self, that is-”

“Ah,” Dido said. “Yes, of course he did.” She looked around, judging the concentration of carnival passersby who might be likely to overhear, and then said quietly, “He’s like you, Benjamin. Or, well, I suppose you could say he’s more like me.”

January blinked. “He’s a woman?”

“Born as one, at least, though he’s told me he doesn’t think of himself that way much any more. You never really forget, of course, but after a while it feels like the disguise is more real than what’s beneath. For myself and Augustus, at least. I’ve gotten the impression it’s more difficult for you.”

“I suppose so,” January said. “If I could live as a woman, and feel independent and secure, I certainly would.”

Dido gave her a rueful smile. “Something we have in common.” 

“And if wishing did any good I’d be making my living as a doctor.” _And you wouldn’t be living in the Swamp. And you would be healthy. And I’d be in Paris with my wife._

“I hope Augustus won’t get tangled up in this murder investigation,” Dido said with a frown.

January sighed. “I doubt it. The murderer was almost certainly a wealthy white man. I’ll bet you twenty dollars the investigation will be quietly dropped.”

“I don’t know,” Dido said, propping her chin up with one hand, her beignet uneaten on her plate. “That lieutenant…”

“You mentioned you had some suspicion about him,” January remembered. “What was it?”

“I…” Dido blinked. “Benjamin, I think I may need your assistance in getting to my bed after all,” she said faintly. 

January reached across the table to take her free hand, counting her blessings for the moment that she need not currently be concerned what others would think of her touching a white woman. She felt for the pulse in the thin wrist. Too fast, and the skin too hot. 

“All right,” she said softly, trying to calculate in her head the distance to the Swamp, trying to calculate if the coin in their pockets would cover a hack or if it needed to be saved for medicine and food. 

“Oh, don’t look so worried,” her friend said, as January got her on her feet. “Fever and I are old friends. _The weariness, the fever, and the fret…_ ”

“I’m not worried,” January said. “I’ll carry you home if need be. You’re lighter than a piano, or most corpses.”

_“Call on me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man.”_

“One step after another,” January said.

They made their way upstream, along tidy streets that gave way to weed-strewn mud, painted wood buildings turning to rough-built shacks and sheds, cafes and businesses replaced by bordellos, saloons, and gambling dens. The smell was soon almost unbearable. January found her steps slowing. As a child she and Olympe had run along the old town walls that once had separated the marshlands from the city, but now those walls were gone and the Americans had settled in the swamp, and January, though she had heard many things of this new neighborhood, had not yet dared to step foot in it. 

But Dido, leaning almost all her weight against January’s shoulder, had begun to shiver, and leaving her to fall and lie in the filthy ditch was unimaginable. “Where are we going?” she asked, trying not to make eye contact with the people on the street. 

“Perdido Street,” Dido said, through chattering teeth. “The establishment of Kentucky Williams, my muse, my Hippolyta...” 

“You’ll have to direct me,” January said. “So stay with me, friend.” 

“Oh, I could walk these streets in my sleep,” Dido said. “I probably have, come to think of it. Go left.” 

The building they eventually arrived at was another plank shed, but it was large, with open French doors and a rickety ladder at the back. The sky was light by this time, and January could hear sounds of drunken men being turned out onto the streets. She felt her nerves being wound tighter. “Up there?” she asked, and Dido nodded. In the washed-out early light she looked ghostly. 

They got up the ladder eventually. Dido, January learned, slept in an attic, on a battered mattress curtained with mosquito-bar. A plank stretched between the rafters, piled high with what January could see were books. A heavy trunk sat in one corner, as battered as the mattress. January rested the violin case against it.

“There should be more laudanum in there, hidden among my petticoats, unless the girls have stolen it again,” Dido said. January tried to deposit her onto the mattress as gently as possible. She sat there, swaying. “Will you help me into my nightgown?” she said. “I hate to impose on your generosity, but- please.” For the first time in their acquaintance, January thought there was something vulnerable in her voice. 

“Of course,” January said. 

Under Hannibal’s coat and shirt, January’s friend had the thin frame of the consumptive and the pale dotted skin of the Anglo-Irish. January helped her into the nightgown. It was very similar to the one Ayasha had worn in Paris, though quite different in cut from the one she herself had worn, before she went to France and became someone else. 

She helped Dido force down cherry brandy mixed with laudanum. It was unlikely to improve her overall health, but when faced with pain the choice was understandable. Then she helped her lie down again. The sun was now peeking in through the slats of the wall. It occurred to her that she'd never yet seen Dido by daylight. She half expected the woman to melt away like some faerie creature who could only be seen by night, but she only muttered to herself, and fisted a hand in the bedsheets, sweat beading on her pale forehead.

January sat in the small room as the day outside grew brighter and hotter, and watched Dido sweat and shake and cough and mutter in six different languages. There was a blanket, but it seemed far too thin. At some time around six January descended the ladder and spoke to a woman in the room below, an impressive Amazon as tall as Dido and twice as broad who seemed quite ready to throw January bodily out of the shed before January hastily explained. She brought water, then, and another blanket of dubious cleanliness. 

“She’s sweet,” the Amazon, who January guessed to be the Kentucky Williams earlier mentioned, said laconically. “Lasted longer than I thought she would.” 

“Does she bring men up here?” January asked, trying to keep her tone neutral. 

“When she can’t get work somewhere better,” Kentucky said. 

Alone in the attic again- except for the semi-conscious Dido- January examined the well-worn books. Then, guiltily, she opened the unlocked chest. Inside were articles of feminine clothing, most of which she recognized, and a corset which had been altered in ways that January could appreciate as ingenious- it looked a lot like the one she wore under her own vest, the one Ayasha had designed for her, though presumably this one had opposing effects. A shaving kit, various empty bottles, and another book, wrapped in the same kind of silk scarves as cushioned the violin in its case. January got as far as determining it was a copy of _The Iliad_ before her guilt overcame her and she gently placed it back inside the chest.

She was exhausted. Angelique Crozat’s funeral was at noon and she would catch hell from her mother for not attending. But she sat there in the hot attic and made sure Dido drank water.

Dido put a hot hand on her face, at one point. “Oh, Philippa,” she said, with more of an Irish accent than January had yet heard from her. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” January said, taking the hand and holding it. “Everything is all right.” 

In that moment she was almost strangely envious. There would have been some bliss, in feverishly mistaking another woman for the one she would never see again, in confusing one set of coffee-dark eyes for another. January found herself wondering what Ayasha would have made of Dido. Flirting was as likely to enrage Ayasha as enthrall her, and she’d never been as avid a reader as January; but she’d rescued drowned kittens, and overpaid the young prostitutes she hired to do piecework for her. 

I’ll find someone to get a message to Mayerling, she thought, I’ll get him to look after her, but the hours ticked by, and she didn’t leave the room. Eventually she lay down on the mattress. There was room enough for two, and she was tired enough to pass into the realm of Morpheus almost instantly.

When she woke the worst heat of the day was past, and Dido was looking at her with black eyes that still glittered with fever but which clearly knew her. _“Amica mea,”_ Dido whispered. Somehow their hands were entwined. January did not even realize it until Dido brought the hand up to her mouth and kissed it, lips cracked and dry against January’s skin. 

“Hello,” January said, and brushed aside the hair that had fallen across Dido’s face. She put a hand on her forehead to check her fever, and then, somehow, the hand was cradling the other woman’s cheek. 

Dido shut her eyes. “ _Fortuna audaces iuvat,”_ she muttered, and then, somehow, they were kissing. Dido tasted of cherry brandy and laudanum and fever, all sickly sweetness, but it was less unpleasant than January might have expected. 

“It certainly does,” January agreed.

The other woman shifted, propping herself up a little against the plank wall, and with a yank one shoulder of the nightgown was pulled down to expose a pale chest and dark nipple. Then thin fingers were tugging on January's wrists, guiding her hands to that chest.

"This should wait until you're well," January said.

Dido laughed, a bitter wheezing sound. "And when exactly will that be? I've fucked when in much worse condition than this, my friend."

"All right," January said, "all right," and leaned down to kiss her again. She kissed her mouth, and then the underside of her jaw, and then her neck, at which point Dido gasped and shivered. Her hands fumbled weakly with January's shirt, finding the hem and sliding up over the ribs of the corset. With one hand January gently pushed her hands away. "Not this time," she said. She could feel her body yearning to be touched, but even with Ayasha it had been many weeks before she could bear to be that exposed and intimate. 

Dido did not protest or ignore the instruction. "On top of clothes all right?" she asked. 

"More than fine," January said. "As are my back and shoulders. And you?" 

"Do what you'd like with me," Dido said, "please." She slipped from French to Latin. _"Give me a thousand kisses and a hundred more, a thousand more again, and another hundred, another thousand,_ -" her voice was breathier and breathier as January kissed along her collarbone, _"and again a hundred more, as we kiss these passionate thousands let us lose track-"_

Dido's skin tasted of sweat. January lifted the lace-trimmed edge of her nightgown and slipped under it, sucking at her friend's small hard nipples, her hands tracing the shapes of protruding ribs, as Dido's fingers scratched up January's shoulders and tangled in her hair. 

It seemed, somehow, like an inevitable conclusion to the last ten hours. Murder and sex, death and life bound up together. She felt as though Dido's fingernails were peeling back her skin, and she would emerge from some chrysalis as someone new, someone who could survive after the cholera, who could reinvent herself in the city that had known her by another name. 

Afterward, lying tangled together in on the narrow bed in the hot little room, she surprised herself by saying, "Angelique Crozat deserved better." 

"You might be the only one to say so," Dido said, yawning. "From what I heard and saw of the woman, I doubt many will be crying genuine tears at her funeral." 

"She was a bitch," January said, "but she deserved better. If I can find the man who killed her- I could try, at least." 

Dido's hands were very gentle on January's face. "Be careful," she said. 

January smiled, mouth curving under Dido's fingertips. "I'll try," she said. 

* * *

Notes:

Thank you very much for the amazing prompts! I had a great deal of fun with this.

Title from Endymion, Book I, by John Keats. Hannibal quotes Keats in several books, so I think he's a fan.

Most of the quotes here are from Keats or Shakespeare, because I'm pretty basic. _“Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting”_ is from [one of Shakespeare's more infamous sonnets. ](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50425/sonnet-20-a-womans-face-with-natures-own-hand-painted)"A thousand kisses and a thousand more" is from Catullus.

I didn't do a huge amount of historical research for this ~~(or Latin research!)~~ and it probably has a great many spots of inaccuracy- then again, so does the canon. One thing I did discover in my reading is that the entire system of plaçage that holds such a prominent place in the series[ is a complete myth.](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/quadroons-for-beginners-d_b_3869605) Which I had no idea about, and kinda puts me as a fic writer in a weird place. I haven't quite yet figured out the best way to deal with that. 

I did come across the story of [Mary Jones,](http://transascity.org/mary-jones-1836/) which is definitely worth reading and provides a tiny window into the lives of queer people in New Orleans in the 1830s, and in my opinion makes it entirely plausible for January to be familiar with transgender people even before meeting Augustus Mayerling. 

Below is an illustration of a scene which ended up not making the final cut, but which I hope you'll enjoy anyway.

[ ](https://imgur.com/4xTJG89)


End file.
